Friday, March 26, 2004

Taiwan's Stolen Election

Executive Summary: On March 20, 2004, 13 million registered voters on Taiwan elected Lien Chan and James Soong president and vice-president of the Republic of China. Their margin of victory over incumbents Chen Shui-bian and Annette Lu was an estimated 1.3 million votes, or 10%. So why did the numbers posted by the Central Election Committee indicate that Lien/Soong lost by 29,000 votes, or 0.2%? Simple. Because the Central Election Committee had long ceased being a referee. It was a player. It was the government's star quarterback, its Secret Weapon. Central Election Committee Members of conscience such as former legislator Wang Ching-feng had resigned in disgust the month before, because they saw what Chen was doing to the Central Election Committee, transforming it into Chen Shui-bian's Reelection Committee.

Referendum/Election Linkage

Consider this common sense, shorthand way of making some sense of the final result.

Both referenda failed because 55% of the voters who went to the polling stations on election day boycotted them. Only 45% of the voters who went to the polling stations on election day obtained referenda ballots.

What does this fact mean to the Central Election Committee's "official version" of the presidential vote outcome?

It means the Central Election Committee's presidential vote tallies were a lie.

As everyone, Blue (KMT), Yellow (NP), Orange (PFP), Green (DPP), and Purple ("Naderite") knows, A-Bian's media campaign explicitly bound voting Yes! on the referenda to voting 1 in the presidential election. It was part and parcel of his reelection strategy. He was determined to exploit antipathy for Beijing to boost his reelection prospects.

Pan Green voters were instructed to vote "100," meaning for president vote 1, for referendum one vote YES, and for referendum two, vote YES.

Pan Blue supporters responded with their own, mirror image binding of the referenda and election. The Pan Blue catechism, which rhymes in Chinese and was memorized by all Pan Blue voters was "For president vote 2! Boycott the referendum!"

Chen's heavy-handed publicity campaign polarized the voters exactly as he intended. None of the above is disputed by anyone across the ROC political spectrum.

Election Day

On election day, 55% of the voters -- Pan Blue voters, obtained presidential ballots, stamped the 2 box for Lien/Soong, then walked out the door, boycotting both referenda.

So the obvious question staring everyone in the face, which has somehow eluded the notice of the international media is,

How did the 55% majority of Lien/Soong votes suddenly become a 48.6% minority of votes!?

And conversely, how did the 45% minority of Chen/Lu votes suddenly become a 48.8% winning plurality of votes!?

Furthermore, even some of those who took part in the referenda probably did so under duress. They felt pressured to take part in the referenda because local voting booths were staffed by people they knew, who might leak their failure to take part in the referenda to their superiors.

In principle this cuts both ways. In practice, the DPP is the ruling party and controls the machinery of government. Pan Blue public servants in particular might lose their rice bowls if they refused to at least go through the motions. These voters in the privacy of the voting booth stamped the NO box on the two referenda after stamping the 2 box for Lien/Soong on the presidential ballots.

Among those who did not boycott the referendum, 20% voted NO. Did these voters vote for Chen/Lu or did they vote for Lien/Soong? You tell me.

TVBS, one of Taiwan's largest cable TV companies, has a solid record for accuracy with its telephone polls. The TVBS 2004 Presidential Election Exit Poll was conducted in association with America's largest exit polling company, Mitofsky International. The poll, drawing from a sample of 16,500 voters, with a margin of error of under 1%, revealed that Lien/Soong was leading Chen/Lu by approximately 6% just before the Chen administration "suggested" that TVBS discontinue announcing exit poll results.

The internationally respected Gallup Market Survey Corp., aka Gallup Poll, showed Lien/Soong consistently in the lead right up to election day. One poll had Lien/Soong leading by 14%.

The Secret National Security Bureau Poll

The National Security Bureau or NSB is the Republic of China's counterpart to America's FBI. Secret NSB polling data is known for its accuracy. Just before election day the results of a secret NSB poll leaked out. Lien/Soong was leading Chen/Lu by 1.2 million votes.

The Professional Oddsmakers

Professional oddsmakers on Taiwan, i.e. "bookies," had Lien/Soong widening the gap between themselves and Chen/Lu right up to election day. Lien/Soong were slated to win by a margin of 600,000 to 1 million votes.

Annette Lu, Prophetess of the Polls

Following the enormously successful 3,000,000 strong Pan Blue organized "Change Presidents, Save Taiwan!" Rally/March of March 13, Annette Lu should have been worried sick. Instead she appeared before the media and smugly predicted "a DPP victory of 20,000 to 30,000 votes?"

Why was she so confident, and in retrospect, so "accurate?"

Could it be because she knew in advance the ostensibly neutral Central Election Committee was planning to "correct" the final results by exactly that much? Could it be 29,000 votes was the margin Chen figured he could get away with claiming, once he and Lu finished acting out their phony "Wag the Dog" assassination attempt, so 29,000 it would be?

Deja Vu, All Over Again

Two friends from the Philippines shared something with me that has been swirling around in my head. They told me they experienced an uncanny sense of deja vu, or as Yogi Berra quipped, "deja vu, all over again." They, along with millions of others on Taiwan, watched the election returns on Saturday night. When the numbers for the opposition, clearly set to win by a comfortable margin, suddenly stopped climbing, their words to each other were "Doesn't this look awfully familiar?" Upon which they broke out laughing. They had seen it all before in their native Philippines. They had "been there, done that." They recognized flagrant, thinly-disguised election fraud when they saw it. They said we were innocent virgins on Taiwan.

About Me

Bevin Chu is a free market anarchist currently living in Taipei, China. His newest blog, An Enemy of the State, is his flagship blog. Articles from his previous flagship blog, The China Desk, have appeared at the wildly popular libertarian website LewRockwell.com, where Chu is a columnist/commentator; at Antiwar.com, the best known anti-war website on the Internet; and at the China Post, where he was a contributing editor. They have even appeared in Pravda -- the post Cold War, post Communist Pravda, of course.